How’s this for an ideal job: Call hundreds of Sacramentans and ask them, “How much money do you make?” After doing it for two months, I’ve learned one thing: Doughnut makers are a grouchy bunch.

The nice ones just hung up on me midsentence; the nasty ones screamed at me. I must’ve caught them on a sugar low.

Some people were forthcoming, others less so. When I called one television station and asked how much its top anchor made, the personnel director laughed at me like I was an idiot.

Looking at all these different jobs became an exercise in mental dress up. “Hey, I could make more money as a coroner! I’ve watched ‘CSI’; it doesn’t look so hard.” But sometimes reality hits. “Chris Webber makes $15 million for shooting baskets? I curse my normal-sized parents!”

Then there’s Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Because the governor says he’ll donate his $175,000 salary back into the general fund, that means he’s making $0 this year from the state.

And now a word about our methodology; We used public records for the federal, state, county and city jobs; Securities and Exchange Commission filings for the salaries of top executives of public companies. Where general occupations and salaries are listed without company affiliations, we used statistical “mean annual wages” and salary ranges for the Sacramento region provided by the state Employment Development Department and the Department of Personnel Administration. We searched the classifieds, called up hundreds of businesses and surfed the Internet. We also called lots of people and asked them how much they make.

For the most part, we’ve stuck to a flat salary, without including commissions, bonuses, overtime and “long-term incentives.” But in some cases, the salary was indistinguishable from these income elements.

Also, while a given job may have a certain salary cap, “regular” overtime can sometimes more than double the take-home pay. Benefits and perks vary dramatically and for the most part are not addressed here.

We’ve endeavored to be as accurate as possible, but sometimes, people, job titles and salaries shift. And sometimes the salaries listed were tough to confirm. For example, the salaries for the Kings players came from an Internet sports site; the Kings organization would not confirm the contract salaries, despite repeated calls.

The hardest part of this survey was knowing when to wrap it up. “Do we have a salary for racing-dog jockey?” After culling through 600 different professions, we winnowed it down to the 200 jobs that offered the broadest picture within the Sacramento region.

Local Government Jobs

Information provided by city and county personnel departments,
in many cases presented as a salary range for that particular position